Tag Archives: cryptocurrency

The Intellectual Stagnation in Academia: Ignoring the Corporate Shift to Bitcoin

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Introduction In recent years, the corporate world has witnessed a historic shift in treasury strategies, with several prominent companies incorporating Bitcoin into their reserves. Despite these significant changes, many finance professors continue to dismiss or ignore the implications of this trend. During my MBA studies, I have personally discussed or emailed with six finance professors over the last three years about Bitcoin. None of them have shown any curiosity or willingness to engage in meaningful discussions about this topic. While I cannot speak for all finance professors, this has been my experience with those I have interacted with. This paper aims to highlight the lack of intellectual curiosity among academics in the face of obvious transformations in corporate and global environments.

The Corporate Shift to Bitcoin The adoption of Bitcoin by companies such as MicroStrategy, Tesla, and Block Inc. marks a pivotal change in how corporate treasuries manage their assets. These companies view Bitcoin as a strategic asset, providing a hedge against inflation and currency debasement. MicroStrategy, for instance, has aggressively acquired Bitcoin, making it the largest Bitcoin treasury in the world. This trend began around 2020 and has continued to gain traction, signaling a shift in corporate treasury management.

In the last month, several other companies have also announced Bitcoin treasury strategies:

  • Genius Group: An AI-powered education group that has committed 90% or more of its current and future reserves to be held in Bitcoin 1.
  • Worksport: A U.S.-based provider of pickup truck solutions that is adding cryptocurrency to its corporate treasury strategy 1.
  • Rumble: A video platform targeting a conservative audience, planning to invest up to $20 million of surplus cash in Bitcoin 2.
  • Metaplanet: A company with clearly stated strategy reserve asset goals and reasoning 3.
  • Strategy (previously MicroStrategy): Continues to lead the way with its Bitcoin treasury strategy 3.

Government Recognition of Bitcoin The U.S. government has also acknowledged the significance of Bitcoin by establishing a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and a U.S. Digital Asset Stockpile. This move underscores the growing acceptance of Bitcoin as a store of value and its potential role in national economic strategies.

Personal Experience with Academic Dismissal Over the past three years, I have personally discussed or emailed with six finance professors during my MBA studies about the topic of Bitcoin. Despite the clear and significant changes in corporate treasury strategies, none of these professors have shown any curiosity or willingness to engage in meaningful discussions about Bitcoin. This lack of interest is particularly surprising given the relevance of Bitcoin to contemporary financial practices and corporate strategies and the fact that there are not many innovations in Corporate Treasury operations. When a new idea comes along you would expect people to be interested to consider if it has any value.

The Importance of Intellectual Curiosity Intellectual curiosity is a cornerstone of academic excellence. It drives innovation, fosters critical thinking, and encourages the exploration of new ideas. The reluctance of finance professors to engage with the topic of Bitcoin reflects a stagnation in intellectual curiosity that is detrimental to both students and the broader academic community.

Conclusion The corporate shift to Bitcoin represents a significant change in treasury strategies that warrants academic attention. Professors should embrace intellectual curiosity and explore the implications of this trend, rather than dismissing it. By doing so, they can provide students with a comprehensive understanding of the evolving financial landscape and prepare them for the future.

Essay: Why Gary Stevenson Should Rethink Bitcoin

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@garyseconomics

Gary, your crusade against inequality is spot-on—the rich hoard wealth, wages stagnate, and housing slips out of reach. You’ve nailed how the system’s rigged, profiting off disparity as you did at Citibank. But your dismissal of Bitcoin as a “scam” or “musical chairs” misses its point. Let’s break it down through your lens. You see value in what’s tangible—property, bonds, cash flows. Bitcoin’s different: it’s digital scarcity, forged by energy-intensive mining, not free “points on the internet.” It costs real resources—miners burn electricity rivaling small nations to secure it. That’s not hype; that’s a backbone. You’ve said wealth concentration tanks demand, keeping rates low. Bitcoin flips that script. It’s not controlled by banks or governments printing money for the elite—it’s capped at 21 million coins, a hedge against inflation you’ve seen erode workers’ lives. You fear Satoshi’s a shadowy puppetmaster, selling off a million coins to dupe the masses. Check the blockchain—those wallets haven’t moved in 16 years. No secret dump, no conspiracy. Bitcoin’s transparent; anyone can verify it. You’d spot a scam in derivatives a mile away—apply that here. It’s not a rich man’s toy; it’s open to anyone with a phone, from East London to Lagos, leveling a field you know is uneven. You’re right about speculative bubbles, but Bitcoin’s survived crashes—$20K in 2017 to $3K, now thriving in 2025 with institutional buy-in. It’s not about quick riches; it’s a store of value, like digital gold, for a world you’ve seen fail the poor. You’ve bet against broken systems before. Bitcoin’s a bet for one—decentralized, fair, and tough as nails. Give it a trader’s eye, Gary. It’s not the enemy; it’s a tool.

@satmojoe

@Jcastweet

@PeterMcCormack

@HawkMcFlipster

@Oriflamme87

What Problem Does Bitcoin Solve? part 3 Buckminster Fuller, F.A Hayek & Henry Ford’s comments

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I’ve written a few things about why bitcoin is the solution to many problems. 

Here for What problem does Bitcoin solve part 1 and here for what problem does bitcoin solve part 2 and here for “Why Bitcoin?“

I wanted to share a few quotes from history to highlight that the control and debasement of money by governments has been an issue for a long time. The faster everyone understands this the faster we can all get on the bitcoin standard for value preservation. 

I explain here why we should support the bitcoin experiment. It solves the problem. If it ends up failing for some reason in the future, we need to recreate Bitcoin and address whatever issue made it fail because we need a currency that can’t be debased by governments. 

The Idea of Bitcoin Needs to Succeed, Even if Bitcoin Fails

“It is utterly clear to me that the highest priority need of world society at the present moment is a realistic economic accounting system which will rectify, for instance, such nonsense as the fact that a top toolmaker in India, the highest paid of all craftsman, gets only as much per month for his work in India as he could earn per day for the same work if he were employed in Detroit, Michigan.  – Page 112 Operating Manual For Spaceship Earth, Buckminster Fuller

F.A. Hayek in 1984: “I don’t believe we shall ever have a good money again before we take the thing out of the hands of government, that is, we can’t take it violently out of the hands of government, all we can do is by some sly roundabout way introduce something that they can’t stop.”

“It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”

― Henry Ford

Ford, who founded Ford Motor Company in 1903, told the publication:

“Under the energy currency system the standard would be a certain amount of energy exerted for one hour that would be equal to one dollar. It’s simply a case of thinking and calculating in terms different from those laid down to us by the international banking group to which we have grown so accustomed that we think there is no other desirable standard.”

Bitcoin is $100k, Should I Buy It Now Or Is It Too Expensive?

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Bitcoin recently breached the $100k price per bitcoin on December 4th 2024. It has retreated slightly but has continued to hover between $90k -$108k/bitcoin. 

Historically bitcoin has had a performance of 3 positive years followed by 1 negative year. While you can’t expect history to repeat itself, it might!

Looking at the below chart you can see we are on track to repeat that performance so far. While not shown 2024 was also a great positive return year for bitcoin so we have 2 years of positive returns. 2025 would be the 3rd year. 

Due to that expectation I fully expect bitcoin to have a good performance in 2025. It is also possible that it has a negative year in 2026 if it continues to follow the historic trend. 

 Of course it is also possible it has a negative year in 2025! We could break the trend. 

We could also break the trend and see that we have a positive year in 2025 and 2026! The future is unknown and unknowable!

https://twitter.com/CryptoKidcom/status/1746139639809720395/photo/1

When people ask me if they should buy bitcoin now I say that they obviously don’t understand bitcoin. If you don’t understand it then I would say “No” you probably shouldn’t buy it. What I tell people is to continue to learn more about why other people buy it. 

Learn about “What problem bitcoin solves.” I have written 2 articles about that here. 

What Problem Does Bitcoin Solve?

We, every person in the world, is in a fight with their own government to keep as much of the value they create as they can.  The government explicitly taxes you, which we can debate but at least it is obvious.  But the government also stealthy steals value from your bank account or savings via inflation and money printing that you have no control over.

What is Money? (What Problem Does Bitcoin Solve -2)

Bitcoin is not an investment. Bitcoin is a store of value. The value you create. Bitcoin is an agreement between people who create value in the world that they will trade their value for other value. The value you create and store in Bitcoin cannot be debased or inflated away by any government by money printing.
I’ve also created a list of great resources to learn more about bitcoin here. 

Books & Videos to Learn About Bitcoin

What I generally recommend people to do is to buy just a little bitcoin so that they will start creating a little interest with themselves. This is how I did it. I bought just $100 and then that made me interested to learn more about what I had bought and why.
You should not plan to sell the bitcoin you buy. This is true for most investments, in my opinion. You should only be investing money you are ready to have invested for 5+ years. 

You shouldn’t try to time the market. You aren’t smart enough for that and neither am I. 

Just buy things that you understand and continue to do research. 

Metaplanet – Japanese Public Company Buying Bitcoin as a Treasury Reserve Asset

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Metaplanet  – Japanese Public Company Buying Bitcoin as a Treasury Reserve Asset

Metaplanet is a publicly traded company in Japan that has set Bitcoin as its primary treasury reserve asset. You can read about it here. You will have to click on their link to their “official disclosure” or you can link directly to the PDF of the official disclosure here. 

You can listen to Dylan LeClair, the Director of Bitcoin Strategy at MetaPlanet, here talk about MetaPlanet and their Bitcoin Strategy. The link takes you to the correct timestamp in the Youtube Video.

 I highly recommend everyone reads this. It lays out in simple, clear language, the benefits to the company of buying bitcoin as their treasury reserve asset. Most of their reasoning applies to individuals also.  I’d like to repost it here directly, but they have requested no reproductions. I have emailed them asking if it’s possible to repost it and will if they allow it. But if not, you can read at the link above. It’s only a 3 page document. 

Metaplanet is the first public company in Japan I am aware of that has started using Bitcoin as it’s treasury reserve asset. But it wasn’t the first worldwide and I’m sure it won’t be the last. 


Here is a previous article I wrote about companies and pension funds starting to buy Bitcoin. 

A short list of those companies is below.

Metaplanet – Metaplanet direct link to PDF

Microstrategy 

Mara – Bitcoin miner

Semler Scientific

Onemed

Block (formally Square, owns Square processing points and Cashapp app)

Private company –

Tahini’s (corporate page) – Restaurant in Canada – Tahini bitcoin article

As well as all these companies continually buying bitcoin, there are 2 US state pension funds that have bought bitcoin they have disclosed so far.

Wisconsin Pension Fund

Michigan Pension Fund

And one, Arizona, that has a resolution for their pension fund to learn about it. Here is the resolution directly.

There are a few other countries that are involved in mining bitcoin. 

Bhutan 

Oman

Ethiopia

Finally, El Salvador is the first country to adopt bitcoin as legal tender. It is also committed to buying 1 bitcoin a day. You can follow directly in their bitcoin address. 

Again, it was the first ,but I doubt it will be the last. 

At this link is a list of all companies holding bitcoin. The above lists are more recent companies and companies that are actively proclaiming that they are accumulating more bitcoin aggressively. 

A second link with entities holding bitcoin. 

0.1 Bitcoin

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There are about 8 billion (8,000,000,000) people in the world. 

According to Kiplinger, globally there are about 59 million millionaires. 

59,000,000/8,000,000,000 = 0.007375 =  0.7375% of people in the world are millionaires. So less than 1% of people are millionaires. 

If you divided the 21 million (21,000,000) bitcoin among the 8 billion people

21,000,000/8,000,000,000 = 0.002625

0.002625 x $60,000/btc = $157.50

You only need to buy $157.50 worth of bitcoin to get “your share” today. 

There are 21 million bitcoin that will ever be made. 

There are 59 million millionaires. So it’s not possible for every millionaire to have 1 bitcoin. 

If we divide the 21 million bitcoin by 59 million millionaires we get 

21/59 = 0.35593220 btc per millionaire.

 0.35593220 x $60,000/btc = $21,355.93 if every millionaire wanted to get “their share” of bitcoin and it was only split among millionaires.

If we go down to units of 0.1 bitcoin then 210 million people could own 0.1 bitcoin.

That is still only 

210,000,000 people/ 8,000,000,000 people = 0.02625 = 2.625% of people would have 0.1 bitcoin.

0.1 bitcoin x $60k/bitcoin = $6,000 to buy 0.1 bitcoin today.

If I was someone with no bitcoin today I’d think hard about setting a goal of getting to 0.1 bitcoin. 

The market capitalization of Gold is $16,590,000,000,000 ($16.59 Trillion) as of 8-11-2024 when I write this.  Note that this changes daily as the price of gold fluctuates and as more gold is mined each year. 

If bitcoin was to attaining the same market capitalization  

$16,590,000,000,000/21,000,000 bitcoin = $790,000 per bitcoin

$790,000 x 0.1 bitcoin = $79,000

If bitcoin was to reach a value of $10 million per Bitcoin then 0.1 bitcoin would be worth $1 million. 

Plenty of people have made a prediction in the millions for the future price of bitcoin. You will have to do research for yourself to determine if you think this is reasonable. But I would encourage you to be inquisitive about why people are prediction such a high price for Bitcoin. 

This isn’t all to tell you you have to buy bitcoin. But it’s to encourage you to look into why many people think bitcoin has value. 


There is not much bitcoin and we are still early as far as world wide adoption. You don’t need to buy much (0.1 bitcoin = $6k today) to potentially have $1 million in the future. 


Of course, only buy as much as you are able to lose! Many people are able to have a risky bet of $6k and if it did happen to go to $0 (which is of course a possibility) they’d still be fine. 

But if that is not you then definitely DON’T buy bitcoin. 


But if you are a person who has sufficient assets, you might try thinking about why so many people have such a high conviction in bitcoin. 

Letter to Iowa State Senator Kevin Alons about Bitcoin

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I sent the below letter to Iowa State Senator, Kevin Alons, related to Bitcoin. I encourage you to copy and send, or modify and send, to him at kevin.alons@legis.iowa.gov

Senator Alons

I read through your bill IA SF2273 related to gold and silver coinage. I appreciate the sentiment and wish you luck with your bill in the future if you continue to pursue it. 


I wanted to appeal to your hard money side with some data about the emerging hardest money ever created, Bitcoin.


As you know, Gold backed currency has failed in many different countries in history for the same reason. The government always centralizes the gold and prints more paper than can back the bills. Even in Ancient Rome when the money was silver, there was coin clipping and physical debasement where existing coins were recalled and melted down to a lower percentage of gold. 

Another issue with Gold is that we don’t actually know how much there is. More gold is mined everyday and more is mined as the price goes up. 

Bitcoin addresses all the shortcomings of Gold that have caused it to fail in the past. 


Bitcoin has a perfectly limited amount, 21 million.

Bitcoin is quickly and easily transmitted across the world. You need a lot of military hardware to transport any significant amount of gold.
Bitcoin is also easily transacted in very small amounts. The smallest unit of 1 bitcoin is 1 satoshi. There are 100,000,000 satoshis in 1 bitcoin. 

0.00000001 Bitcoin = 1 Satoshi. 

Bitcoin currently has a market capitalization of about $1 trillion.

Once 1 BTC = $1 million, it will have a market capitalization of $21 trillion and 1 satoshi will = 

$0.01

Using the lightning network consumers are easily able to make very small transactions such as at a grocery store or a restaurant. 

If you read this post on my website, https://mywheellife.com/2024/06/23/2024-bitcoin-adoption/, you will see that there are a lot of large institutions like the Wisconsin state pension adding bitcoin to their portfolio.
It is also legal tender in El Salvador and they are buying 1 bitcoin a day also to ad to their treasury.

As you have probably seen there are now ETF’s available that have bought 1 million bitcoin this year in the USA only. 


The available supply of 21 million bitcoin is draining quickly. 

I would encourage you to investigate more about bitcoin.

Perhaps you have heard that President Trump has recently endorsed Bitcoin. He is speaking at the Bitcoin Conference in Tennessee this Sunday, 7-28-2024. You should be able to find it on Youtube later.


I would also point you to this video that just came out “Thank God For Bitcoin”

It is one of the best videos I’ve seen to explain the benefits of Bitcoin.

I’d encourage you to introduce a bill, similar to Arizona, to direct the IPERS pension fund to investigate adding bitcoin to the IPERS portfolio. That would be a first step.

A 2nd step would be to have a state reserve of Bitcoin.


Thank you for your time.

1 Bitcoin Per Day

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El Salvador, the first country to make Bitcoin legal tender, but unlikely to be the last, is buying 1 bitcoin a day. 

You can track their purchases here. 

https://bitinfocharts.com/bitcoin/address/32ixEdVJWo3kmvJGMTZq5jAQVZZeuwnqzo-nodusting

El Salvador actually started doing this on Nov. 18, 2022, when the bitcoin price was $16,600! Today it is $60,000.

There are 450 new bitcoin created each day through mining. There will only ever be 21 million created. Only 19,747,693.75 have been mined as of this writing (6-26-2024). 94%. The last bitcoin will be mined in 2140. 

El Salvador, a tiny country, is buying almost 1 full day’s worth of new bitcoin mined each year. Imagine how many other countries and companies could start buying this soon? 

I’ve already shared with this post, how many companies and pension funds have started buying bitcoin this year. 

The Wisconsin pension fund bought $160 million worth of bitcoin. 450 new bitcoin a day x $60k/btc = $27 million. So Wisconsin bought 5.9 days of new bitcoin supply. 

Do you think the state of Wisconsin will be the last Pension to buy bitcoin?

2024 Bitcoin Adoption

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Bitcoin adoption has been progressing rapidly in the first 6 months of 2024. 

Wisconsin’s pension fund has added bitcoin to its balance sheets, buying more than $160 million worth of shares in two newly approved funds earlier this year.

While $160 million is a lot of money, Krause said it’s a small fraction of Wisconsin’s overall pension fund. At the end of December, SWIB held more than $155 billion in assets, with the vast majority of that representing assets in the Wisconsin Retirement System.

“Like any good portfolio manager, you want to diversify,” Krause said. “And now that bitcoin has been around for well over a decade, we’re aware that not only does it offer pretty strong returns — sometimes over periods of time quite phenomenal returns — but it also has diversification capabilities. It doesn’t move directly, in tandem with stocks and bonds.”

I suspect this won’t be the last pension to buy bitcoin,  especially since “The Arizona State Senate is considering a proposal to encourage the Arizona State Retirement System (ASRS) and the Public Safety Personnel Retirement System (PSPRS) to explore the inclusion of Bitcoin ETFs in their investment portfolios.”

Also, Japan’s Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF), the world’s largest pension fund by assets under management, announced that it is seeking information on “illiquidity assets,” including bitcoin, as part of its exploration into potential new investments. 


In addition to various pension funds, more companies have started using bitcoin as their treasury reserve asset. 

The Japanese company, Metaplanet, has set bitcoin as it’s treasury reserve asset. 

The Metaplanet, treasury, was christened with the 1 billion Japanese Yen (worth approximately $6.5 million) injection into Bitcoin by the former. Metaplanet said it is set to make Bitcoin its treasury asset moving forward. It said it will start making Bitcoin bets to mimic the related embrace of the coin by American business intelligence and software firm MicroStrategy.

Another company, Semler Scientific, Inc. (Nasdaq: SMLR), a pioneer in developing and marketing technology products and services to healthcare providers to combat chronic diseases, announced today that its board of directors has adopted bitcoin as its primary treasury reserve asset. In addition, Semler Scientific announced that it has purchased 581 bitcoins for an aggregate amount of $40 million, inclusive of fees and expenses.

The pioneer company of this strategy, Microstrategy, has also Acquired 11.9K More Bitcoin for $786M in June 2024. This is after in March 2024, the company added 9,245 BTC for $623 million after raising money in a similar debt issuance.

In addition to launching 12 Bitcoin Spot ETFs in the USA in January 2024, other countries are continuing to also launch Bitcoin Spot ETF. Australia was the latest. 

Finally, some interesting nation state interest has been shown in Bitcoin. 

El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, has been reelected for a 2nd 5 year term. He made bitcoin legal tender in El Salvador in 2021. No country has followed, yet. But there have been many positive developments since then in El Salvador. It seems only a matter of time before another country makes it legal tender. 

Perhaps Argentina?

During an exchange on X (formerly Twitter), he (Argentina’s President) declared: “There will be a free competition of currencies, so if you wish to use Bitcoin, there will be no problem.”

Bitcoin Miner Marathon Digital Signs Deal With Kenya to Invest in Green Energy Projects

The company will help monetize stranded energy in the African country and help manage its renewable energy production.

The “problem bitcoin solves” is described in this article. 

Many people are obviously waking up and realizing that bitcoin solves a problem they have.
 

Bitcoin, A Withdrawal of Productive Capacity To A Fair Arena

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Atlas Shrugged is a 1,000+ page novel that most people will never read, so I don’t feel bad “spoiling” it here. An important part of the book centers around the question “Who is John Galt?”

It turns out John Galt is an inventor who is tired of having his work stolen, taxed or taken advantage of by the government and society. 

As a result John Galt organizes a protest of sorts, by hard working people. They all physically withdraw to Galt’s Gulch, a hidden valley where they set up their own society. They are all productive and trade value for value. They don’t take advantage of each other and they don’t print new money from a central bank to dilute the value that others have worked to store!

Bitcoin, in principle and in action, is a way for smart people to create their own productive society alongside the current society. We don’t need to physically withdraw ourselves. We merely need to withdraw our productive capacity and wealth from the system. You simply do this by buying some bitcoin and poof! You have entered the secret society where value is preserved!

Why would you want to enter this society though? Ask yourself “If I want to save $100 today to spend in 2 years how do I do that?”

It is actually a MUCH harder question to answer than it seems at first glance.

Sure you can just put a $100 bill under your mattress but as we have experienced in the last 2 years, you could lose 10% a year or more, and that is just in the USA. In places like argentina (until recently) you could see inflation of 100% a year meaning prices double each year.
You could put it in the stock market, which has a 75% chance of being up any 1 year. But it also has a chance of going down.
You could buy a bond but with changing interest rates it’s hard to know if you would actually have the same amount of money next year or not!

You could buy gold, but short term it has trading fees in and out and might be up or down in any 2 year period.
There is just no really good way to store value! This is all due to central banks and governments printing more money everyday!

As they print more money, the cash you hold becomes less valuable!

People just accept that this is the way things have to be. But it is not! Bitcoin has the potential to be an asset that slowly gains value every year. There is a fixed amount of bitcoin ever to be created, 21 million. These 21 million bitcoins measure the value of all goods in the world. As there is more abundance the value of the fixed amount of bitcoin continues to increase!

Many of the smart, productive, people that I know have purchased at least some bitcoin to join the community. They purchase goods and services from each other in bitcoin. You too can join this exclusive community of productive, smart people. Shoot me an email or leave a comment asking any questions you have about bitcoin!